Six Crises

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Authors: Richard Nixon
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to one of the staff members: “Mr. Russell, will you bring Mr. Chambers in?”
    Russell went to the adjoining bedroom where Chambers was waiting. Minutes seemed to pass as we sat there in silence waiting for him to return. Actually, after only a few seconds, Russell opened the door and re-entered the room with Chambers.
    They came through a door at the far end of the room, in back of Hiss, and then had to walk several steps to reach the davenport on his right. But during this period, Hiss did not once turn around to look at his accuser—the man he had said he was so anxious to see “in the flesh.” He just sat in his chair staring straight ahead, looking out the window.
    After Chambers reached the davenport, I asked both him and Hiss to stand. I then said, “Mr. Hiss, the man standing here is Mr. Whittaker Chambers. I ask you now if you have ever known that man before.”
    â€œMay I ask him to speak?” said Hiss. “Will you ask him to say something?”
    I asked Chambers to state his name and business.
    Chambers responded: “My name is Whittaker Chambers.”
    Hiss walked toward Chambers until he was not more than a foot away and looked down into his mouth. He said, “Would you mind opening your mouth wider?”
    Chambers repeated: “My name is Whittaker Chambers.”
    Hiss, speaking more loudly, demanded again: “I said, would you open your mouth? You know what I am referring to, Mr. Nixon. Will you go on talking?”
    Chambers continued: “I am Senior Editor of Time magazine.”
    Hiss then turned to me. “May I ask whether his voice, when he testified before, was comparable to this?”
    â€œHis voice?” I asked.
    â€œOr did he talk a little more in a lower key?” Hiss continued.
    McDowell commented, “I would say it is about the same now as we have heard.”
    Hiss was not yet satisfied. “Would you ask him to talk a little more?”
    I handed the Time editor a copy of Newsweek which was on the table and asked him to read from it.
    Hiss said: “I think he is George Crosley, but I would like to hear him talk a little longer. Are you George Crosley?” he asked Chambers.
    A quizzical smile came to Chambers’ lips as he answered: “Not to my knowledge. You are Alger Hiss, I believe.”
    Hiss straightened up as if he had been slapped in the face. “I certainly am,” he said defiantly.
    Chambers answered quietly and with a smile, “That was my recollection,” and continued to read from the copy of Newsweek— “since June, Harry S. Truman had been peddling the Labor Secretaryship left vacant by Lewis B. Schwellenbach’s death in hope of gaining the maximum political advantage from the appointment.”
    Hiss interrupted: “The voice sounds a little less resonant than the voice that I recall of the man I knew as George Crosley. The teeth look to me as though either they have been improved upon or that there has been considerable dental work done since I knew George Crosley, which was some years ago. I believe I am not prepared without further checking to take an absolute oath that he must be George Crosley.”
    I asked Chambers if he had had any work done on his teeth since 1934. He replied that he had had some extractions and some bridge-work in the front of his mouth.
    Hiss then said, “Could you ask him the name of the dentist that performed these things?”
    I could hardly keep a straight face, but I decided to play the game out.
    â€œWhat is the name?” I asked Chambers.
    He replied, “Dr. Hitchcock, Westminster, Maryland.”
    Hiss then said: “That testimony of Mr. Chambers, if it can be believed, would tend to substantiate my feeling that he represented [himself] to me in 1934 or 1935 or thereabouts as George Crosley, a free-lance writer of articles for magazines. I would like to find out from Dr. Hitchcockif what he has just said is true, because I

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